blind and burn
by dragonFELL
Summary: By the time she realizes she's a killer at heart, it's much, much too late.


_A/N: Here is the product of my internal ramblings about how Leona is presented as a defender and protector, yet her kit makes her one of the most prominent kill-lane supports. Like, yeah, she'll do everything to protect her carry... and she'll probably do it by killing you. T_T Anyways. Thanks for reading._

_also I know you'd never be reading this but thanks, Veni, for the critique on the first section. :D_

* * *

**blind and burn**

Life had been simpler with the Rakkor.

She is taken aside by the instructor again. The news had spread like wildfire: Cyrus picked a fight with gentle Molik, and Leona had stepped in to defend the weaker boy. "This can't go on, Leona," her instructor begins, as he always had before. "Do you know what you're doing when you protect others?"

She shakes her head.

"You're killing them," he says. "You realize that, don't you?"

She hadn't. Not until it's too late. By the time she watches her friends fall in their Rites of Kor—by the time she realizes everything is her fault—it is much, much too late.

* * *

She vows not to make the same mistake again, but old habits die hard.

When she passes by Diana in the hall, Leona can immediately tell—from the way the acolyte walks, from that dead expression on her face—Diana has run into trouble with the elders again. The disciplinarians were at least sympathetic enough to keep the lash-marks restricted to where others could not see, but Leona isn't blind; the acolyte is in pain.

In this lonely girl, Leona sees Molik trying to hide his wood carvings from the instructors, and young Pantheon throwing out his fruitless attempts at baking. She sees all the children she had defended, and remembers the consequences of her actions as shown by their Rites. She wants to defend Diana the same way she defended Molik, but that's a mistake she won't make again. She knows she can help Diana—but this time she will do it right.

So instead of going to the elders, she speaks to the acolyte. About how she can't give up simply because she's different. About how Leona herself had only discovered her powers when she was sentenced to death for challenging authority.

Diana manages a weak smile. Even so, with her silver hair and solemn pale eyes it's like sunlight after a dreary grey storm. "You're telling me to speak up for what I believe in?"

"If you believe in it, there's no reason not to."

The acolyte takes in her words and thinks, then nods. She thanks Leona for the advice.

Leona finds some solace in Diana's smile.

* * *

When Leona receives the news about the slaughter, she immediately knows it's her fault.

The reports say that a member of the Solari presented her findings of an ancient lunar civilization. The council branded her a heretic and sentenced her to death.

Diana did exactly as Leona had done, what Leona had told her to do—defend what she believed in. It killed the council. It also killed Diana, for Leona passed by the avatar of the moon in the Institute of War and found that she could not recognize a single trace of the quiet, shy young acolyte she had once known.

She tried to learn from her mistakes. She hadn't protected Diana the way she protected Molik; she wanted Diana to be able to defend herself. She didn't want someone else to die, because of her.

How ironic, then, that she ended up losing Diana anyways.

* * *

Now she stands next to the Sheriff of Piltover, crouching nervously in the cover of brush—the calm before the storm, as minions are still making their way to their position on the map.

They are facing Ashe and Sona. Experience tells her that this matchup should be an easy one—but it's not and it never is; she's been called a protector and a defender and she's always tried to play the part. She was the Radiant Dawn, her sword and shield raised to protect. So why, Leona wonders as she lands a Zenith Blade on Ashe and follows up with a stun with one ruthless bash of her shield, does she protect by killing?

She and Caitlyn share a small nod of a job well done before they recall to base. Even as her summoner instructs her on what to purchase from the shopkeeper, Leona cannot dispel the look on Ashe's dying blue eyes before the archer finally fell. She was the avatar of the sun and the sun protected all… and yet here she was, in the League of Legends, killing others to defend.

* * *

Sometimes she thinks back to life with the Rakkor. To this day she disagreed with her instructor… but in a way he was right, wasn't he? Her dead friends proved it. Diana proved it. Leona herself proved it, every day on the Fields of Justice.

She is Leona, the Radiant Dawn. She is the sun, and she protects... and blinds, and burns.


End file.
